Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of transportation and more particularly to a system and method for automatically generating a roster of who plans to drive, who is currently driving, who has driven, and a list of passengers for a particular vehicle.
Description of the Problem
There are many instances where it would be valuable to track who has driven a vehicle and/or who has ridden in it as a passenger. This is especially true with vehicles that need location and/or data tracking. This can include commercial and fleet vehicles as well as rental and other vehicles such as van pools, car sharing, school buses, other buses, taxis and private vehicles. While in many cases, a vehicle is an automobile, truck or van, it may also be an aircraft, watercraft, train or any other vehicle that has a driver or can carry passengers. In some cases, the vehicle may be an autonomous vehicle with no driver.
In a commercial setting, while the monitoring and tracking of fleet vehicles has been the subject of significant automation, the remaining tasks of identifying who takes out a vehicle and maintaining a passenger manifest can often be a cumbersome, time-consuming process in which the driver has to fill out forms and also get a key at a specific location or administrative office. This can take a lot of time and is open to human error.
Certain vehicles, whether passenger cars, vans, buses, even planes and trains, often have a list of authorized drivers, or pilots, and also a list of passengers. Passengers can be part of a known group (herein, those registered on a, “passenger roster network,”), or, unknown, or a guest. Unknown riders can be invited to register on the passenger roster network.
The manual process of rostering the vehicle, i.e., recording the name(s) or other identification of the driver (pilot, engineer, etc.) as well as all possible passengers can be tedious and error-prone. It is especially difficult to accomplish in vehicles where passengers may ingress or egress mid-route as part of the normal service, or where drivers may change in-route.
It would be advantageous to have a system and method that could automatically and wirelessly roster a vehicle in real-time as drivers or passengers enter or leave the vehicle. This can be done with modern wireless technology. With wireless communication from a mobile device that is logically connected to the device owner's identity, this process can become easier, faster and less complicated while at the same time adding security.